


Hear Me Out

by anenemyanenome



Series: 9-1-1 prompts [9]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Happy Ending, Humor, M/M, Misunderstandings, Post 4x07, Tiny bit of Angst, and then the misunderstanding is cleared pretty fast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29879538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anenemyanenome/pseuds/anenemyanenome
Summary: “I’m going to kill your friend.” Chim declares.Eddie blinks. “What?”He looks towards Hen with wide eyes, asking her for context.She sighs. “Your boy fucked up.”Or, Albert texts Chim, his phone eats half the words, Chim misunderstands and decides he wants to kill Buck for defiling his little brother
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: 9-1-1 prompts [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050092
Comments: 18
Kudos: 667
Collections: 9-1-1 Tales





	Hear Me Out

**Author's Note:**

> this is a buddie fic!!! please remember that
> 
> this is so fucking stupid, I apologize in advance 😂

“ _What the FUCK_?!” 

Chim’s shout shaves about a year off Hen’s life with how much it startles her. Confused and alarmed, she finds herself following after Chim as he gets up from the couch with a furious look on his face. 

She looks around trying to find the source of his anger, her heart beating dangerously fast in her chest. 

They had been sitting on the couch for the better part of an hour now, each looking at their own phone, basking in each other’s company, silent as they waited for their next call. 

No one had dared to say the q-word out loud again after that last shift from hell, but Hen was not afraid to say it in the safety of her own mind. Enjoying a quiet moment with her bestie is a rare treat these days. She had been enjoying herself until Chim’s unexpected outburst. 

Finding the loft completely empty, she turns back to Chim with a confused frown. “What? What’s going on?”

“What the fuck!” Chim repeats as he turns his phone to her, shaking it in front of her face. 

Hen grabs his hand to steady the phone, squinting as she tries to read the words on the screen. Her eyes widen in shock as she realizes what she’s looking at. 

_howie, you gotta hlep me  
i slept with buck  
and now its awkward  
asfghkl hes gonna kickme outt  
i didnt mean to, it just happend _

She looks at the top of the conversation and sees the name of the sender. 

Albert. 

She reads the messages again to make sure her brain is not playing tricks on her. 

Nope. That’s what it says. 

What the fuck. 

Chim’s phone beeps as he gets another text. Hen sees the message briefly before Chim pulls the phone back to himself to check it. 

_help_

Chim’s hands shake as he lifts his eyes from his phone, fuming.

“Where is he?”

Hen assumes he’s talking about Buck and for a second she doesn’t know what to do. 

One side of her wants to have her friend’s back and follow his lead as he goes to find Buck and do god knows what. Another side of her, the protective mother side, is telling her to de-escalate the situation. 

For both Buck’s and Chim’s sake.

She has never seen Chim this angry. If there’s anything Chim is known for, it’s his ability to turn just about anything into a joke. (And maybe his inability to keep a secret, but he’s been working on that one. Hen is very proud of her best friend for that.) 

Hell, he had a rebar lodged in his skull and he was still cracking jokes. The murderous look on his face right now is so disconcerting and uncharacteristic, that it almost makes him unrecognizable.

It’s also weirdly heartwarming to see him so protective of Albert considering how he first reacted when Albert showed up at his door nearly an year ago. 

“Chim.” 

“Hen, no.”

Chim starts heading for the stairs and Hen has no choice but to follow after him. 

They reach the locker room downstairs and find Eddie standing alone in front of his locker, buttoning up his uniform shirt. 

“Where is Buck?”

Eddie glances at them as he tucks his shirt into his pants. “He’s coming in a little late today. Should be here in half an hour.”

Hen pointedly doesn’t comment on how Eddie always knows the answer to that question, those two are more co-dependent than anyone else she’s ever met. 

“Of course.” grumbles Chim. 

Eddie seems to finally catch on to the mood in the room. He looks quickly between the two of them. “What’s up?”

“I’m going to kill your friend.” Chim declares. 

Eddie blinks. “What?” 

He looks towards Hen with wide eyes, asking her for context.

She sighs. “Your boy fucked up.”

“What did he do?”

Hen opens her mouth to answer him but Chim beats her to it. “You know, Buck has done some really shitty things but this takes the fucking cake.” 

Chim starts pacing. “His sister is going to have my baby, what was he thinking? Is this-”

“Is Maddie okay?” Eddie interrupts, concern overtaking the confusion on his face. 

“-some kind of-“ Chim stops walking. “What?” he shoots Eddie an annoyed look. “Of course she’s okay. This is not about Maddie, Eddie.”

Eddie shakes his head exasperated. “Then what is it about?” 

Hen rolls her eyes. “Buck slept with Albert.”

Eddie’s face drops. “What?”

“Yeah.” Hen says. 

“I swear if this is some weird way of-“ Hen stops listening to Chim as she takes in Eddie’s reaction. 

Eddie is a complicated man. She likes him and respects him a lot, but she doesn’t have the same relationship with him she has with the rest of her boys. The same closeness. 

There’s a distance there that she’s never been able to bridge. He reminded her a lot of Bobby in the beginning. Withdrawn, reserved, always keeping them at arm’s length, even through the quick smiles and occasional sarcasm. 

In retrospect, it’s kinda funny how quickly the two of them were worn down by Buck’s perseverance, his commitment to carving out a place in their hearts, inadvertently clearing the path for the rest of them to sneak in. 

On second thought, knowing what she knows now about the Buckley parents, it’s with a twinge of sadness that she realizes that that was probably what drew Buck to them in the first place. Craving the attention of someone emotionally distant.

She’s getting distracted. The point is that Eddie is softer now. After all he’s been through, he somehow found his way back from his grief and became a kinder and gentler man. Hen can safely say that their friendship has grown a lot over the years, and she has come to understand him much better than she did before. 

That is not to say that she can read him when he doesn’t want to be read. Eddie has an uncanny ability to shut down his emotions that Hen envies sometimes. His competence and the way he’s always in control make him a very intimidating man when he wants to be. He’s usually the calm inside the storm when they’re out in the field, stoic and focused in the middle of absolute chaos. 

What Hen is seeing playing on his face right now, is more than what she’s seen from Eddie in a long time. 

She watches as he looks down, a series of emotions flickering across his face. There’s shock, there’s anguish and anger in there, but most of all, there’s something too close to devastation for Hen’s liking. He blinks a few times, then clenches his jaw and curls his hands at his sides as he straightens up, his face suddenly blank and inscrutable. It feels weird to witness his process in real time and shown so plainly on his face.

Hen frowns at him, worry gnawing at her chest. That is not a reaction you have to your friend doing something shitty. That’s what you look like when someone breaks your heart. 

It confirms something for Hen, even if she would’ve preferred the confirmation to come with different circumstances. 

She doesn’t exactly enjoy seeing her friends in pain, after all. 

Eddie makes eye contact with her. He must see the sympathy on her face because he looks away with a barely-there flinch. 

Oh, honey...

Unrequited love is a bitch. 

-

Like Eddie predicted, half an hour later Buck walks in and heads to the locker room to change. 

Hen sees him and choses not to say anything to Chim yet. It’s going to get ugly and if she can postpone it for a few minutes, she will. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take Buck long to put on his uniform. The man comes bounding up the stairs with a smile on his face. “Good morning, beautiful people. How are you this fine Monday morning?”

He pats Chim on the shoulder as he passes him on his way to pour himself some coffee. 

Oh no. 

Not unlike a horror movie, Chim turns around towards Buck slowly, his face morphing into a glare as he spins on his heel. “You.”

Bless Buck and his inability to read a room sometimes. 

“Hey Chim. How’s Maddie?”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Huh?” Buck finally realizes something is wrong and lowers the coffee pot to look at Chim. “What did you say?”

“How dare you?”

Buck frowns in confusion and looks around. His eyes stop on the coffee pot and his eyebrows go up in realization. “Oh.” He gives Chim a sheepish look. “Sorry, was that for you? I’ll make you another one. Or you can drink mine. Here.”

Chim bats his hand away almost making him spill the coffee on the floor. 

“ _Dude._ ” Buck complains. 

“I don’t care about the fucking coffee, Buck.” Chim says. “That’s not what this is about and you know it.”

Buck gives him a look as if he’s waiting for the punchline. “What did I do?”

“Are you kidding me?!” 

“No?” Buck says, setting his mug down on the counter. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Chim.”

“So sleeping with my brother was so insignificant to you that you’ve already forgotten about it?”

Buck’s eyebrows knit together. “What? Chim, what the hell.” 

“I don’t know if this is a weird payback for dating your sister, or maybe for keeping your family secret from you, but this is not okay. Albert is way too young for you.”

“I let him sleep on my bed because he spilled a bunch of food on the couch, how is that a problem?”

“I don’t care how it started, I care that you decided that having sex with my kid brother was okay!”

And now their voices are getting too loud to be arguing in an open space. Hen approaches them cautiously as Buck splutters at Chim’s words. 

“ _What_?”

Hen puts a hand on Chim’s shoulder but he shrugs her off. 

“I thought you were past this, Buck. He’s basically a kid and you’re living together. If I knew this was gonna happen I would’ve never let him stay with you.” 

“Okay, no, wait-“ Buck puts his hands out in front of him. “Just wait.” He takes a deep breath. “First, Albert is not a kid. You know we have a 5-year difference. We’re basically the same age compared to you.”

Chim’s lips curl into a snarl. “You-“

“Second!” Buck interrupts. “You think I had sex with Albert. Why?”

The first inkling that something isn’t right seems to finally hit Chim. He leans back, dropping his aggressive posture. “He told me.”

Buck makes a skeptical noise. “He said those exact words, I had sex with Buck?”

Chim purses his lips as he thinks about it. “I’m not sure.”

“Yeah, I didn’t sleep with Albert, Chim.” Buck states, then corrects himself with an eye roll. “I didn’t have sex with him. We slept on the same bed, once, and kept it extremely platonic, we did _not_ have sex.”

Chim seems to deflate. “But I-“

Hen decides to intervene. “I’m not gonna lie, Buck. I saw the texts and it really seemed like that’s what he was saying.”

Buck extends his hand out. “Show me.”

Chim digs his phone out of his pocket and holds it out to him after opening the texting app. 

Buck frowns as he reads the messages, muttering under his breath. “What? When was this... Wait, this was this morning.” His frowns deepens before he facepalms with a groan. “Oh my god, _Albert_.”

Buck brings the phone to his ear as he calls Albert. The phone seems to ring a couple of times before Albert answers. 

“Hey, it’s Buck. Do you mind telling your brother exactly what you meant by your texts this morning? He seems to have gotten the wrong idea.”

Buck rolls his eyes at whatever Albert says, tells him to check his messages and puts the phone on speaker mode. 

“Oh my god!” Albert is saying. “Oh my god, this stupid phone. I meant to say that I slept with Veronica!” He whines. “And now it’s even more awkward!!”

“Who’s Veronica?” Hen asks. 

“My neighbor.” Buck explains. He lowers his face closer to the phone and raises his voice pointedly. “ _Our_ neighbor. Who I went on a date with. And who Albert decided to sleep with afterwards.”

“God, I wrote ‘I slept with Buck’s date’ but the phone ate half my sentence!” Albert says. “And your date was a disaster! You literally asked me to distract her while you took the trash out just so you could avoid her!”

“Bye, Albert.” Buck replies and ends the call. He raises his eyebrows at Chim as if to say, _see?_

Hen can’t help it. Laughter bubbles up inside her and bursts out before she can stop it. Chim puts his face in his hands with a groan. 

“Did you really think I would sleep with Albert?” Buck asks with his arms crossed. 

Chim curses under his breath. “You read the texts, what was I supposed to think?”

“I don’t know, give me the benefit of the doubt?” Buck shakes his head, the corners of lips curving up. “What were you gonna do anyway? Fight me?”

Hen laughs and Chim rubs his face, embarrassed. “I don’t know. I just got really mad, I can’t explain it.”

“Not even touching the fact that I’m definitely _not_ attracted to Albert, do you know how messy that would be? We live together.”

“I know!” Chim exclaims. “That’s why I asked you what the hell were you thinking.”

“And you also know that if I did sleep with him, it would be none of your business, right?” Buck admonishes. “Not only did I not say anything when you started dating my sister, Albert is not a kid, even if he’s not all that mature.” 

“Says the pot about the kettle.” Hen teases. 

“Heyy.” Buck complains with a pout, but his eyes are shining with amusement so Hen knows he knows she’s just teasing. “I’ve matured! I’m a grown man now.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She says. She bumps Chim with her shoulder. “You good now?”

“Yeah.” Chim chuckles, rubbing his face again, contrite. “You’re right, Buck. Fuck, I’m sorry. That was dumb.” He points his finger at him as he makes a final admission. “I still don’t like the idea of you two together, though.”

“Well, now you know how I feel.” Buck jokes and then jumps back as Chim tries to kick him in the shin. 

-

It’s not long after everything is resolved between Hen’s two idiot friends that the alarm rings above them, announcing their next call. 

Hen is grabbing her helmet when she hears Buck speak from her left. 

“What’s his deal?”

Hen turns to see who he’s looking at and sees Eddie heading for the truck with a still carefully blank expression on his face. He must’ve ignored Buck’s greeting or something. 

How does Hen tell him it’s because Eddie thinks Buck slept with Albert without exposing her friend? 

“I don’t know.” She lies. “I haven’t seen him since this morning when Chim was still raging and looking for you. He told us you were coming late.”

The second part is not a lie, but it does let Buck know that Eddie is still probably under the impression that he slept with Albert. Hen thinks maybe it will get him to go find Eddie and tell him the truth. 

Well, if he doesn’t, she will. No point in prolonging Eddie’s pain. 

“Wait,” Buck’s eyes widen in alarm. “Did Chim tell him about the Albert thing?”

Hen nods as she starts heading for the truck too. Buck follows her but his face is turning white and he stumbles a little. 

“Oh no.” He meets Hen’s eyes. “ _Hen_ , I-”

He’s interrupted as Bobby puts his arm through the window and smacks the outside of the truck loudly with his palm. “Guys, come on!”

Both Hen and Buck rush to get in and settle in their seats next to each other, headset and seatbelts on. 

Hen lifts her head after fastening her seatbelt and looks around. Eddie is looking out the window and Buck is staring at him with an anguished look on his face. 

Oh no. 

Hen is pretty sure she knows what’s going on. 

It’s not unrequited love that she saw, but it _was_ heartbreak. 

Buck tries to knock his foot against Eddie’s to get his attention but Eddie ignores him. 

Hen feels Buck’s body tensing next to her. She feels him take a fortifying breath and then his voice comes through the headset. His eyes do not leave Eddie. 

“Cap, you wanna hear something funny?” 

His smile is wide, like he really is just sharing a funny story, but his eyes are too intense, too searching, for it not to be a desperate attempt to get Eddie to look at him. 

“What?” Bobby says from the front seat. 

“Chim wanted to fight me today.”

“What!” Bobby’s head swivels around as he tries to look at them. 

Eddie is still looking away but there’s a small frown on his face, curiosity surfacing. 

Chim lets out a long-drawn-out groan as he realizes the funny story is at his expense. “I already said I’m sorry.”

That gets Eddie to look at them. Hen can tell the moment his eyes meet Buck’s because they widen and there’s a hint of hope in them. 

“Yeah,” Buck says, not tearing his eyes away from Eddie. “Apparently Albert texted Chim this morning about sleeping with our neighbor but forgot half the sentence, making it look like he was saying he slept with me. Chim wanted to fight me to defend Albert’s honor.”

Chim complains and says he never actually tried to fight Buck as Bobby laughs from the front seat, but Hen’s attention is on Buck and Eddie. 

Eddie lifts his eyebrows, silently asking him if it’s true and Buck nods, extending his foot to touch it against Eddie’s again. This time Eddie doesn’t pull away, he takes a deep breath instead, relief clear on his face, and then he smiles softly at Buck, shaking his head in disbelief. 

Buck echoes his smile and shrugs with a silent _what you gonna do?_

Eddie bites his lip and turns to the window again, but there isn’t a cloud over his features anymore. Hen feels Buck’s body sag in relief next to her. 

She could nudge his shoulder, something, just to let him know she saw that, give him some reassurance, some support, but she opts not to. 

She figures there’s a reason they’re hiding their relationship, and whatever it may be, she’s going to let them do their thing until they’re ready to share with the rest of them. 

For now, she’s just glad they sorted it all out. 

She tunes them out, ignoring the soft glances they keep sending each other, and focuses back on the conversation with a big smile on her face, not intent on passing up the chance to tease Chim a little bit more.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how old Albert is supposed to be on the show. He’s 24 in this for no particular reason. John Harlan Kim is actually 28. And Kenneth Choi (Chim) is 49. Like, the only ages that seem to match up with their real ones are Oliver (Buck), Aisha (Hen) and Peter Krause (Bobby). Angela Basset (Athena) is 62!!! Like what the hell, what a queen 👑
> 
> I also can’t remember if Buck has a spare room or if Albert is sleeping on the couch..
> 
> I apologize for any mistakes or plot holes but it’s literally been a week of me trying to write this dumb story and I literally can’t anymore. I thought of this at like 3 am and I couldn’t let it go, it’s not my best work 😅
> 
> Also, I didn’t tag it as secret relationship bc I wanted it to be a surprise but if this bothers anybody, please let me know


End file.
